3 categories

Sailed at melville again this arvo with Lao and the Pointman. Had a blast again in some nice strong gusts. Good to see so many people out today making the most of it!!

Sonic 85, North Ram F8 5.4, FO 28 Weedster

6 categories

8000Km on the odometer!

Very up and down session at Melville with Pointman and Snake. Gusts to 36 said the text from Pointman. Rigged the 5m in the pouring rain and put the new elmo weedy 24cm (it is a whistler) in the *brd nonose. Barely managed to get off the beach!

Some good squalls saw me take off on a Nmile down the bay with a high 32 in the middle but a big hole at Majestic. Really struggled to get back. Persevered for a bit but eventually went in and changed to the JP84 and 29cm. Should have rigged the 5.8 too.

One decent alpha run and one squall that lasted about 1.5 mins at the end with a Melville PB screaming through the chop towards the kite area.

Shame you got skunked Pointman. Good team effort though.

New fin seems to make the board trim flatter but definitely feel the loss of upwind performance. It will be interesting to give it a proper speed test.

5m koncept, *brd nonose, 24cm elmo weedy (thanks Elmo)/ JP84, 29cm elmo weedy.

Melville 5-35K.

Bit of a frustrating session.  Rocked up at Melville and it was honking.  Got some 35K gusts on the anemometer.

Rigged the 5.8 Koncept + CA47 + 28 C3 Venom.

One run up to the Majestic and back was all I managed on that combo before the wind completely backed off.  Walked/body-dragged/dogged back in.  Plugged in the S-Type 93.  Went to rig the 6.6, then the wind came back in at a solid 22-25K and the 5.8 was nicely powered up.  Had a few nice runs on this combo.

Breeze switched around to WSW, perfect angle for a mile run, so I took off on a nice puff and blasted most of the way down to Peli.  Scored a PB mile on that run .

And spent the next hour getting back upwind  via a combination of some very slow dogging, a long walk of shame, and some treading water in the middle of the river contemplating the long swim to shore.  Majorly grumpy and pissed off by the time I trudged back into the carpark.

Still can't complain...I've had a great winter's sailing and this sort of frustration has been quite rare.  And seeing the PB mile when I fired up Realspeed kinda made the hour of graft getting home worthwhile.